Hafslund ASA

Using Enterprise Mobility & Security (EMS) to Increase Data Security and Control in the Cloud

Hafslund ASA is one of the largest electricity companies in the Nordic countries. It owns the electricity and district heating networks in the Oslo region and is the largest seller of electricity to consumers in Norway. Hafslund ASA was established in 1898 and is listed on the Oslo stock exchange. Its net sales amounted to NOK 13.8 billion in 2016. Hafslund’s strategy is to take advantage of state-of-the-art technology in all operations. The company works with leading technology consultants to ensure that it has access to the best expertise in each field. Hafslund’s commitment to new technology is reflected by its own DevOps team, which produces innovative e-services on a weekly basis. “As the deployment of cloud services becomes easier and easier, data security and service management becomes increasingly significant to us,” says Øyvind Takøy Naas, Senior Advisor and Head of Security at Hafslund. Conditional access, end-user self-service functionality and access management are the key areas of Hafslund’s data security design. The right design and implementation make Hafslund’s employees’ day-to-day work significantly easier and more independent. “We realized that we need more advanced data security and better access management functionality. We decided to contact Innofactor’s Norwegian subsidiary Lumagate. Their task was to come up with the best practices for us to meet these needs, and they did a perfect job of that.” With Lumagate’s support, Hafslund deployed parts of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility & Security to enhance its management of systems and costs. “The solution included password renewal as a self-service, multi-stage user identification and an Active Directory federation service to integrate our on-premise Active Directory with Azure AD. It works great.”

Old systems are a challenge for many companies. Shutting down previously used applications and platforms takes time. Hafslund aims to shut down old services and systems one at a time, replacing them with cloud-based solutions. “In an ideal world, we would acquire the cloud services that best suit our needs from the best service providers. If a service were to be below our standards, it would be easy to replace it with an alternative solution.” This makes it essential to choose the right platform. Hafslund has spent a lot of time on developing its Microsoft Azure platform to make it as functional as possible. More than 1,000 new features are added to Microsoft Azure each month. The large number of new features makes understanding and utilizing them challenging, which is why Hafslund utilizes leading consultants specializing in the platform to stay at the forefront of development. “Last week over lunch, we were talking about a feature that we felt was missing from Microsoft Azure. When we got back to the office after lunch, we noticed that the very same feature had just been released. That exemplifies the rapid rate of innovation in today’s world. We saved a lot of time by not having to write the code and use batch commands to implement the feature we needed. Instead, our problem was solved by a few clicks of the mouse. We simply don’t have the time to look for answers and go through all the new information, so I was very pleased that our partner told us about it. This example shows how important it is to work with the leading professionals in the field,” Naas adds.

“We realized we need more advanced data security and better access management functionality. We decided to contact Innofactor’s subsidiary Lumagate. Their task was to come up with the best practices for us to meet these needs, and they did a perfect job of that.”